CAN is a serial communications protocol for distributed real time control with bitrates up to 1 Mbit/s for applications from high speed industrial networks and automotive electronics using low cost multiplex wiring. CAN protocols and specifications including ISO 11898 have been widely adopted for communication among devices, commonly referred to as CAN nodes, where the CAN standard ISO11898-1 defined the CAN data link layer and ISO11898-2 and ISO11898-5 CAN standards describe CAN high-speed medium access units or physical layer components (e.g., transceivers), and ISO11898-6 refers to another physical layer (PHY) standard. The ISO standards ISO11898-1, ISO11898-2, ISO11898-5 and ISO11898-6 are incorporated herein by reference. CAN nodes typically include a CAN-compatible transceiver connected to a microcontroller (MCU) or digital signal processor (DSP), with the transceiver providing physical layer interconnection to a two-wire CAN bus. The CAN protocol defines the data link layer and part of the physical layer of the OSI model. CAN FD (CAN with Flexible Data-Rate, or flexible data rate CAN) has been proposed for higher data rates, in which CAN FD protocol controllers can implement standard CAN communication as well as flexible data-rate operation. CAN nodes implementing control units or CAN controllers based on the original ISO11898-1 CAN protocol are referred to as non-FD CAN nodes, and nodes having a control unit that uses the proposed CAN with Flexible Data Rate protocol are referred to herein as CAN FD nodes. CAN FD nodes may operate using the original CAN protocol and thus may be added to existing CAN network installations. However, the CAN FD protocol is not directly interoperable with the original CAN protocol, where non-FD CAN nodes receiving CAN FD communications will interpret the CAN FD frame as an error and potentially generate an error frame, thereby corrupting the communications on the mixed network. ISO11898-6 with extensions proposes a complicated solution using CAN with selective wake up in which conventional CAN transceivers are put into a low power mode and then awoken following FD communications, but this approach involves significant latency in resuming CAN communication. In particular, extensions and proposals suggest adding additional logic to the transceiver described by ISO11898-6 to make it smarter to detect an FD frame in a special mode and ignore it, thus preventing bus error generation or the message getting through to the normal CAN node. Thus, while mixed networks including both CAN FD nodes and non-FD CAN nodes are possible and desirable, these mixed networks cannot easily take advantage of the enhancements associated with CAN FD protocols. Improved apparatus and methods are therefore needed to mix CAN FD and non-FD CAN nodes in the same network and allow the CAN FD capable systems to communicate with the advanced features and data rates of CAN FD while ensuring the non-FD CAN nodes will not corrupt the data during the CAN FD transmissions.